If you’re looking for a good summer read, here are a few recommendations that I can’t imagine could possibly disappoint anyone:
John Colapinto’s About the Author
Patrick Conroy’s Beach Music
Tom Wolfe’s A Man In Full (even better than Bonfire of the Vanities, IMO).
We’ve all stood in awe of others’ abilities in certain areas. I think the abilities that inspire me most are those that I truly cannot understand. When I see a pianist sight-reading a piece of concert music, I honestly don’t understand how any human mind can process information that quickly (let alone get his fingers in the right places without practice).
And of course there are the prodigies whose genius defies comprehension. In his debut recital at age 10, Camille Saint-Saens offered to play any of the 32 sonatas of Beethoven which he was prepared to play from memory. “Would someone pick a number between 1 and 32, please?” he is reported to have asked the audience when he came back on stage for his encore. Incredible.
Similarly, I stand in awe of the great poets and songwriters who capture incredible passion and perception of the human condition in just a few simple words and melodies; I wouldn’t know how to begin to try to do something like this. Here’s Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
I’m trying to memorize the B minor Waltz of Chopin. To be sure, memorization is the only way I’ll ever have a chance to perform a piece like this half-decently. My reading skills are terrible, and I really need to be able to look at the keys, and ensure I’m committing to a uniform and well-thought-through fingering.
The fingering here really is the key to any success I can ever hope to achieve here. The piece is not too difficult technically; the challenge becomes apparent when you listen closely to the various passages with their numerous twists and turns. Each of these requires that I make a tough decision: force-fit a uniform fingering — even in cases where it may be a tiny bit awkward — or do what a true professional would — memorize a number of different fingerings — each one perfect for the passage in question. I tend to make compromises and land somewhere between the two. Here, for instance, I play almost every F sharp in the right hand with a 4. It makes the whole process far easier for me to impose that consistency — even though I feel a bit guilty for not taking my lumps and memorizing the fingering that the editor wrote in the book.
Having said all this, I expect to have a reasonable level of success with this after a month or so. Sadly, I’ll never play it as well as the 10-year-old here, but I should be able to get a reasonable command of it given enough practice. I’ll post a video later in the summer and let you be the judge.
I’ll try to write a post on this topic at least once a week, in which I note the zingers I’ve encountered recently. Here are two I heard I the past few days–both of which are so common that I believe they’re used incorrectly far more often than they’re used correctly.
1) “That begs the question: what should he have done?” The idiom “begging the question” does not mean to raise or suggest a question, but rather to applying circular logic, as in: I know she’s a virgin, because she told me she is, and I know she didn’t lie, because virgins don’t lie.
2) “The speech built to a crescendo.” A crescendo is the building in volume or intensity, not the peak of that volume or intensity.
I’m really enjoying the poetry written and performed in the context of folk and bluegrass music. Here’s Tony Rice and company with Gordon Lightfoot’s Home From The Forest, one of hundreds of great examples of this. Follow along with this powerful story, and enjoy.
You’ll notice the greatest mandolin player ever to walk the Earth, Sam Bush, helping out there. And speaking of the raw spiritual power of the poetry that this genre often speaks, here’s Sam’s “Same Ol’ River.”
Read more…
As I wrote earlier this week, I tend to say and do some pretty maudlin things in the course of expressing my love for my kids. This morning, as we drove out the driveway on our way to school, I asked if could sing a song that expresses a wish for them both. “If you absolutely have to, Dad,” my son Jake replied.
I let out with the first verse of this Neil Young masterpiece. When my daughter Valerie got out of the car, I called back to her, “Hey Val. Long may you run.”
A friend of mine, Jim Meskimen, runs a blog to which I’d like to call readers’ attention: Applied Silliness.
The first thing you need to know is that Meskimen may be the single most talented person I’ve ever met. His main gig is improvisational comedy, and he’s so good at it that it’s scary. How anyone can think that quickly and be so conversant with so much fodder for material is astounding. I encourage readers to comb through the website and get to know this genius.
I also encourage people to participate in the “caption the cartoon” contest. It’s great exercise for the mind. Though of course no one takes the prizes too seriously, I won an “Honorable Mensch” last season (though I actually thought I had better ideas in previous contests that did not win). If you look through the entries for the current contest, you’ll see mine. I have no chance this time, IMO; it’s the best I could come up with, but it’s too esoteric and there are some terrific competitors that are far funnier.
But beneath all the fun, Meskimen makes some important points I think we should all bear in mind: Enjoy your life. Don’t take things too seriously. Apply your personal power and creativity to lift the spirits of those around you. Challenge what is accepted as reality in the absurd world around you, but keep it light and positive.
I often come across phrases that appear grossly incorrect to me—even though they seem to pass muster just fine with the rest of the world. For instance, one hears of “new initiatives.” Unfortunately, this happens to be part of the tagline of one of the sponsors of NPR’s Morning Edition, so I hear it every weekday on my way home from dropping the kids off at school.
But do we really need the word “new” in there? Since an “initiative” is an “introductory act or step, a leading action,” can’t we assume that the initiatives in question are new? This seems akin to referring to a first-year ball-player as a “new rookie.”
I sent this to dear friends of ours who just had a baby…
…and when I think of babies I think of lullabies. For what it’s worth, here is my favorite, the Berceuse (French for lullaby) of Frederic Chopin.
I’m told that the steadiness of the left hand represents in a way the constancy of a mother’s love and the unchanging rhythm of the physical rocking of the baby’s cradle — and that the phantasmagoric right hand represents her unbound hopes and dreams for the baby and for the infinitely beautiful life they will have together. This idea has always made sense to me — and has further increased my love of the piece.
May Elijah be a never-ending source of amusement, love and pride to you both.
It’s the birthday of French composer Erik Satie, probably best known for The Three Gymnopedies. It was featured in the odd but terrific film My Dinner With Andre.